Constructing WhatsApp-based Speaking Instructional Material (WABSIM) for EFL Teaching and Learning: A Need Analysis

Abstract

Today’s English teaching and learning speaking in the digital era at the university level is full of challenges but promotes many possibilities. WhatsApp, the most popular social media used for communication, can be interactively utilized to study speaking about daily conversations in a flexible way anytime and anywhere to solve students’ speaking problems as well as one of the teaching and learning media in the disruptive era. This research was trying to develop WhatsApp-based speaking instructional material (WABSIM) for the Basic Speaking subject to help students speaking English effortlessly and fast about daily topics. This research was the first step of Research and Development (R&D) of the ADDIE model i.e., to analyze students’ needs to learn Basic Speaking through WhatsApp instructions. The research took place at the English Education Study Program of one private university in South East Sulawesi, Indonesia. Sixty-eight (68) students participated in giving information regarding to the students’ needs through an online survey in the Google Form. It revealed that students wanted to learn the Basic Speaking materials integrated with mobile technology in the form of social media of WhatsApp to make the learning is fast, enjoyable, fun, more communicative, more collaborative, and help them learning anytime anywhere, in and outside the classroom more independently. Also, students need real-life topics, authentic, interactive, and presenting domestic and international viewpoints in the WABSIM. Besides, the developed speaking materials should cover the audio and visual materials to cover students’ learning styles varieties, and the materials should include the speaking components such as vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, fluency, comprehension, and task. Data resulting from the needs analysis informed the researchers of crucial issues to consider in developing WABSIM for the design, development, implementation, and evaluation in the next phase of this project. Further, students’ preferences and learning goals can be integrated with perspectives from the mobile learning literature and the affordances of WhatsApp to facilitate communication, collaboration and interaction in ways that have the potential to accelerate English language learning on the part of university students. There would be value in conducting similar needs analyses for other mobile learning instructional material development processes internationally, both for comparison with the Indonesian results here and in order to inform those development processes.

Utilizing WhatsApp Group as a Medium of Lecturer-Students Interaction in EFL Classes during COVID-19 Pandemic

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Instagram Usage in Learning English: A Literature Review

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Social Media Benefit for Advancing Language Ability in E-learning Environment: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Social media is created innovatively based on the objectives and design of learning innovations. For example, the use of social media by providing instructional materials facilitates the improvement of speaking skills through WhatsApp-based speaking instructional materials (WABSIM) [16] and promotes writing skills with Facebook-based writing instructional materials [15]. In addition, other research uses social media combined with an application, namely Gengobot, which is the result of a combination of Chatbot with LINE to facilitate learning Japanese [21], [22].…”